By Tom Goodspeed
In one of my articles, I spoke of mallet head positioning at the finish of your swing being crucial to the direction of your shot. There is another element that is equally essential to the accuracy of your shots, and that is what is commonly referenced as the sweet spot.
The sweet spot is the section of the mallet head where the cane is joined with the mallet head. Pretty much the central portion of the mallet head. That is where we want to make contact with the ball. The reason being is that if you hit off center, especially at speed, the impact will more likely dictate the position of the mallet head as opposed to the other way around. We want to dictate the direction of the ball and that is best done by hitting center….or at the sweet spot. If you do hit at the toe or the heel of the mallet head, your mallet head will tend to spin around the ball as you hit, making it very challenging to dictate proper placement.
There are a couple of ways you can improve on your sweet spot. Growing up as kids, a few of my friends and I developed our sweet spot ability unknowingly, as we used to saw off broom handles and use the sticks to hit around a soft ball off a bike. Clear evidence of a very early addiction.
In any event, if you have an old mallet lying around, you could saw off both the toe and heel ends of the mallet and use the remaining mallet to stick and ball on occasion. The reduced weight of the mallet won’t help in practicing your distance shots, but it will help in developing your eye and your ability to focus on the sweet spot.
Another method that the late, great Joe Barry (9 goals) used in helping me with my knock-ins was to set up two balls apart from each other at a distance just enough for the swing of the mallet head to pass between them. Then he would set the ball I was to hit in between them. My task was to hit the center ball without hitting either of the other two. Those of you out there that had the gift of watching Joe Barry hit a polo ball know that Joe didn’t hit a polo ball, he launched them. Between Joe and Daniel Gonzalez, they helped teach me how to hit a knock-in a hundred yards. So give some thought and time to the sweet spot of your mallet. I promise it is worth the consideration.
Happy Sweet Spot!!
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